A South Florida con man who spent weeks living in Miami and Miami Beach hotels racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bills he never paid was sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday.
James Peter Sabatino, 37, was sentenced during a 9:30 a.m. hearing in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The sentence is part of a plea deal made with prosecutors.
Sabatino was arrested on first-degree grand theft and organized scheme to defraud charges last year after racking up tabs at hotels totaling nearly $600,000.
According to a Miami Beach Police report, Sabatino checked into the Hilton Miami Beach at 101 Ocean Drive back in August 2013, reserving five rooms for himself and his guests and telling the hotel to charge the rooms to the Sony Entertainment Corporate account.
By the time he checked out almost five weeks later, Sabatino had racked up an unpaid balance of $174,000, including over $100,000 of champagne, the report said. Prosecutors said hotel workers later called Sony and discovered he didn't work for them.
Sabatino pulled off a similar scheme at other local hotels. As part of the plea deal, Sabatino will have to repay $594,000 to the hotels.
According to the Miami Herald, Sabatino's cons didn't end after his arrest. In August, while in jail, he somehow got Miami-Dade County taxpayers to pay for a surgery to repair a lazy right eye he's had since he was a kid, the Herald reported.
Sabatino feigned headaches and claimed the lazy eye was a result of a stroke he had while in custody at the jail, according to the report.
"I kept saying I was having these headaches, and how can we make them stop?" Sabatino told the Herald in a phone interview. "Next thing I know, they approved the surgery."
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Sabatino claims the surgery, which he considers a cosmetic procedure, cost taxpayers $247,000, though the actual figure may be much lower.
Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office spokesman Ed Griffith said the procedure was deemed medically necessary.
